PARIS (AP) — France announced Tuesday that it plans to vote in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly this week.

With the announcement, France becomes the first major European country to come out in favor, dealing a setback to Israel. The timing of the announcement appears aimed at swaying other European nations.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told parliament that France has long supported Palestinian ambitions for statehood and ‘‘will respond ‘Yes’’’ when …

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Thousands of people are gathering in the Egyptian capital for a protest against President Mohamed Morsi, who last week granted himself sweeping new powers.

Protesters and riot police clashed in Cairo on Tuesday near Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago.

Lawyers left their syndicate chanting, “The people want the downfall of the regime,” – the signature chant of the protests that toppled Mubarak in February, 2011.

Several …

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BEIJING: Four young Tibetans have set fire to themselves in restive areas of China while hundreds of students protested against the government, exiles and rights groups say.
The self-immolations were the latest of at least 20 similar protests this month and more than 80 over the past two years.
Kunchok Tsering, 18, died after he set fire to himself in Xiahe, or Labrang, county in the western province of Gansu, the London group Free Tibet said.
The Tibetan …

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The U.S. war in Afghanistan is supposed to be winding down. Its contractor-led drug war? Not so much.

Inside a compound in Kabul called Camp Integrity, the Pentagon stations a small group of officers to oversee the U.S. military’s various operations to curb the spread of Afghanistan’s cash crops of heroin and marijuana, which help line the Taliban’s pockets. Only Camp Integrity isn’t a U.S. military base at all. It’s the 10-acre Afghanistan headquarters of the …

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The last straw for the African American police officer living in an upscale Orange County community was the acid pellets someone shot into his garage in October, the corrosive capsules damaging his car.

It had been an ugly, racially tinged pattern since the Inglewood police officer, his wife — a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy — and their two children had moved into the Yorba Linda neighborhood in 2011.

Rocks were thrown through their windows, car tires …

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Barack Obama heaped praise on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu for agreeing to the Egyptian ceasefire plan and offered increased US funding to beef up Israel’s air defence batteries.

The White House, in an unusual twist, highlighted that Netanyahu had followed Obama’s advice, which was to accept the ceasefire deal.

The statement from the White House was couched in extremely supportive terms for Israel, which the Obama administration views as necessary if it is to hold out …

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The number of solar power systems across the island state has doubled every year since 2007, with nearly 20,000 units installed. But with homeowners and businesses now producing nearly 140 megawatts of their own power — the equivalent of a medium-size power plant — and solar tax credits biting seriously into the state budget, Hawaii legislators and electrical utilities are tapping the brakes.

Solar tax credits cost the state $173.8 million this year in foregone revenue, …

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The police in Mumbai arrested Monday a 21-year-old college student Shaheen Dhada for a Facebook status update and her friend Renu Srinivasan for clicking “Like” on the update. The case is the latest in a string of recent crackdowns on Internet speech in India.

The update had criticized a general strike called by a political party, the right-wing Shiv Sena, to mourn the death Saturday of its elderly founder and patriarch, Bal Thackeray. The controversial …

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CAMDEN, N.J. — On a cold autumn night, Darran Johnson, 22, stands by the police tape strung between two trees in the housing complex where he lives with his mom and siblings. On a walkway 20 feet away, a middle-aged man lies dead, shot in the throat and head, sprawled on his back beside a battered 10-speed bicycle. His face is masked in blood that gleams bright red in the crime scene photographer’s flash.

Johnson watches …

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HOW does it end in Gaza?

This has been the issue with all the self-defeating Israeli military offensives of the past 16 years — Operation Grapes of Wrath in Lebanon, Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and now Operation Pillar of Defense, all of them, not coincidentally, initiated on the eve of national elections in Israel.

Gilad Sharon, the son of Ariel Sharon who orchestrated Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, has an idea for an ending. He …

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